Stephen Sondheim

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Stephen Sondheim has written the music and lyrics for Bounce (2003), Passion (1994), Assassins (1991), Into the Woods (1987), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sweeney Todd (1979), Pacific Overtures (1976), The Frogs (1974), A Little Night Music (1973), Follies (1971; revised in London, 1987), Company (1970), Anyone Can Whistle (1964), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), and Saturday Night (1954; first production in London, 1997; New York, 2000), as well as lyrics for West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965), and additional lyrics for Candide (1973). Side by Side by Sondheim (1976), Marry Me a Little (1981), You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow (1983), and Putting It Together (1992) are anthologies of his work as composer and lyricist. For films, he has composed the scores of Stavisky (1974) and Reds (1981) as well as songs for Dick Tracy (1990), for which he won an Academy Award. He also wrote songs for the television production Evening Primrose (1966), co-authored the film The Last of Sheila (1973) and the play Getting Away with Murder (1996), and provided incidental music for the plays The Girls of Summer (1956), Invitation to a March (1961), and Twigs (1971). He has won Tony Awards for Best Score for a Musical for Passion, Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Follies, and Company. All of these shows won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, as did Pacific Overtures and Sunday in the Park with George, the last also receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1985).

Mr. Sondheim was born in 1930 and raised in New York City. He graduated from Williams College, winning the Hutchinson Prize for Music Composition, after which he studied theory and composition with Milton Babbitt. He is on the Council of the Dramatists Guild, the national association of playwrights, composers, and lyricists, having served as its president from 1973 to 1981, and in 1983 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1990, he was appointed the first Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theater at Oxford University and in 1993 was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2015.

Stephen Sondheim died on November 26, 2021, at the age of 91.

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Latest Release

  • $25 2LP+MP3
    Available
    Sweeney Todd (Film Soundtrack) 2LP
    November 13, 2020

    The soundtrack to Tim Burton's film of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, first released on Nonesuch Records in 2007, is available here in its first-ever vinyl edition, a two-LP set. The film, which won the Golden Globe for Best Picture, is an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Tony Award–winning musical, starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and the late Alan Rickman. "Something close to a masterpiece, a work of extreme—I am tempted to say evil—genius," exclaimed the New York Times' A.O. Scott. "This Sweeney is a bloody wonder," raved Rolling Stone's Peter Travers, "intimate and epic, horrific and heart-rending as it flies on the wings of Sondheim's most thunderously exciting score."

    Available

News

  • November 26, 2021
    Composer and Lyricist Stephen Sondheim Dies at 91

    Composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim died at his home in Connecticut today at the age of 91. "An intellectually rigorous artist who perpetually sought new creative paths, Mr. Sondheim was the theater’s most revered and influential composer-lyricist of the last half of the 20th century," writes the New York Times in its obituary. Several Broadway, film, and original cast productions of his works have been recorded for Nonesuch Records, including A Little Night Music, Road Show, Sweeney Todd, Company, Bounce, Into the Woods, The Frogs, Evening Primrose, Saturday Night, and Gypsy. His songs have also been featured on Nonesuch albums by Mandy Patinkin, Audra McDonald, and Dawn Upshaw.

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  • October 1, 2021
    Steve Reich to Publish 'Conversations' Book via HarperCollins' Hanover Square Press on March 8, 2022

    Steve Reich will publish Conversations, a new book, via HarperCollins' Hanover Square Press, on March 8, 2022. In the book, the composer speaks with collaborators, fellow composers, musicians, and visual artists influenced by his work—including Nonesuch Records Chairman Emeritus Robert Hurwitz, Jonny Greenwood, Kronos Quartet's David Harrington, Stephen Sondheim, Nico Muhly, Brian Eno, Michael Gordon, and others—to reflect on his prolific career as a composer as well as the music that inspired him and that has been inspired by him. The New York Times calls it "a surprising, enlightening series of conversations that shed new light on the music and career of 'our greatest living composer.'" The New Yorker says: "Through this series of insightful, wide-ranging conversations starting from his student days to the present pandemic, we gain a compelling glimpse into the mind of 'the most original musical thinker of our time.'"

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About Stephen Sondheim

  • Stephen Sondheim has written the music and lyrics for Bounce (2003), Passion (1994), Assassins (1991), Into the Woods (1987), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sweeney Todd (1979), Pacific Overtures (1976), The Frogs (1974), A Little Night Music (1973), Follies (1971; revised in London, 1987), Company (1970), Anyone Can Whistle (1964), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), and Saturday Night (1954; first production in London, 1997; New York, 2000), as well as lyrics for West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965), and additional lyrics for Candide (1973). Side by Side by Sondheim (1976), Marry Me a Little (1981), You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow (1983), and Putting It Together (1992) are anthologies of his work as composer and lyricist. For films, he has composed the scores of Stavisky (1974) and Reds (1981) as well as songs for Dick Tracy (1990), for which he won an Academy Award. He also wrote songs for the television production Evening Primrose (1966), co-authored the film The Last of Sheila (1973) and the play Getting Away with Murder (1996), and provided incidental music for the plays The Girls of Summer (1956), Invitation to a March (1961), and Twigs (1971). He has won Tony Awards for Best Score for a Musical for Passion, Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Follies, and Company. All of these shows won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, as did Pacific Overtures and Sunday in the Park with George, the last also receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1985).

    Mr. Sondheim was born in 1930 and raised in New York City. He graduated from Williams College, winning the Hutchinson Prize for Music Composition, after which he studied theory and composition with Milton Babbitt. He is on the Council of the Dramatists Guild, the national association of playwrights, composers, and lyricists, having served as its president from 1973 to 1981, and in 1983 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1990, he was appointed the first Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theater at Oxford University and in 1993 was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2015.

    Stephen Sondheim died on November 26, 2021, at the age of 91.

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